Louisiana Supreme Court: Orleans judge was right to order new trial for massacre suspect Michael Anderson

Late Friday, the Louisiana Supreme Court refused to take up prosecutors' appeal to stop a new trial for Michael Anderson, the lone suspect in a 2006 Central City massacre.

Michael Anderson

The decision means that Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office must re-try Anderson on charges that he systematically and single-handedly gunned down five teenagers during a pre-dawn rampage.

Anderson, 23, is due in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court on Monday for a status hearing. A trial date hasn't been set.

The state supreme court only announced that it wouldn't hold oral arguments over the capital case. No written ruling was released Friday, and when asked for the opinion a spokeswoman for the justices said that the court was closed for the weekend.

A jury in August convicted Anderson of five counts of capital murder for the shooting rampage that killed five teenagers at the corner of Danneel and Josephine streets in June 2006, and condemned him to death row.

The quintuple murder was one of the city's bloodiest crimes, and took place just ten months after Hurricane Katrina, as the region was grappling with recovery from the levee failures that flooded 80 percent of New Orleans.

Anderson is the only person ever charged with gunning down brothers Arsenio Hunter, 16, and Markee Hunter, 19, along with Warren Simeon, 17, Iraum Taylor, 19, and Reggie Dantzler, 19.

All were killed with the same .40-caliber weapon, which left 27 casings at the corner of Josephine and Danneel streets, police said.

But after learning that District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office had failed to turn over a videotaped interview of its sole eyewitness before trial, Criminal District Court Judge Lynda Van Davis ruled that Anderson, 23, was robbed of a fair trial.

The decision overturned the first death penalty sentence in Orleans Parish since 1997, and marked the first time in recent history that a district court judge in Louisiana had reserved a capital conviction.

Defense attorney Richard Bourke said Friday evening that the high court's decision means that Anderson will receive a fresh trial, complete with the videotape - during which Torrie Williams tells prosecutors that she didn't make the Central City corner until 6 a.m.

Prosecutor John Alford handed over the tape at a post-conviction hearing Jan. 5, sending off a bombshell of allegations that the office purposely kept it from the defense team until after Anderson was safely shackled with a sentence to die by lethal injection.

On June 18, Davis ordered Alford jailed for contempt of court, after he said that the DA's office would not comply with her order to reply in writing to defense motions that asked for favorable evidence. The judge later vacated that contempt ruling.

The deadly rampage, which led to the governor sending in the National Guard to help patrol the streets of New Orleans, took place before daylight broke.

At trial, the jury only heard Williams say that she stumbled upon the bloody scene just moments after the teenage boys had been repeatedly shot while riding in a sport utility vehicle.

The jury heard that Anderson had clashed with the teens, who called themselves the "Fly Guys," at an Uptown club hours before. Prosecutors relied on Williams and also jailhouse informants who testified that Anderson had confessed all to them while locked up awaiting trial.

One of those informants, Ronnie Morgan, later received four years off from his federal sentence for bank robbery in exchange for his testimony - something the jury in August wasn't told.

Davis ruled that Morgan's deal should have been disclosed in order to fairly inform the jury.

Cannizzaro explained the undisclosed videotaped interview of Williams as a good-faith mistake, saying his prosecutors only found the tape after the August trial and that it had been lost in the shuffle when his office moved between buildings.

Davis, a former federal prosecutor, said that the explanation meant nothing.

"If the jury disregarded Williams' testimony as proving nothing, then Anderson's conviction is based on the testimony of three jailhouse snitch witnesses, one of which received the deal of the century that was not revealed prior to trial," Davis wrote in her March ruling.

Last month, Cannizzaro filed a 138-page appeal with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal, which upheld Davis' ruling within eight days.

Late Friday, DA spokesman Chris Bowman issued a statement saying that Cannizzaro "strongly disagrees" with the high court but "respects the court's ruling and our country's system of laws." The DA is ready to try Anderson again, Bowman said.

"The office convicted him once, and we believe that we will do so again," he said.

Prosecutors, in 2007 led by former DA Eddie Jordan, made the videotaped interview after the office had dismissed the charges against Anderson, saying that Williams had disappeared and that she was unreliable anyway.

New Orleans police held a press conference the day after the case had been dropped and introduced reporters to the witness.

Jordan's team held the recorded interview before securing a fresh set of indictments against Anderson, who was 19 at the time of the quintuple murder.

Anderson was never formally sentenced to death. He remains jailed without bond awaiting his new trial on the capital murder. He is also serving a 5 1/2-year federal sentence for a gun violation.